Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives:
Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives

Michael McKenna

The buzz about the success of Frankfurt examples has centered largely around whether any such examples can succeed in eliminating all robust alternative possibilities while preserving the integrity of judgments of moral responsibility. Robust alternatives (allegedly) figure into the ground upon which it is judged that an agent is morally responsible for what she has done. I believe that one way in which Frankfurt Theorists have been too generous with their adversaries is in the basis for granting the status of robustness to an alternative that is within the scope of an agent's control. Frankfurt Theorists have, by and large, assumed that any alternative within the scope of an agent's voluntary control is morally significant and is, therefore, sufficient for robustness. But this made the game too easy for the Incompatibilist. By further restricting the range of morally significant alternatives, the Frankfurt Theorist can grant an agent control over a range of unpolluted actional pathways--oodles and oodles of them--while still denying that any of those alternatives could play a proper role in contributing to the ground on which an agent is deemed morally responsible. This allows the Frankfurt Theorist to avoid the compelling case made by those incompatibilists who defend the alternative possibilities at the loci of freely willed actions.